I have been using Elixir for the past more than 2 years and got say that it has an awesome ecosystem for overall web development, I've been using and writing open source libraries and they are looking pretty solid as well. The company I work for also uses it as its main backend for the past almost 3 years and it has been working nicely since then. Hiring also got way easier, not only because of the existing developers using it already but also because the interest on it has increased.
I second that Elixir's ecosystem is exceptionally great for such a young language. I love working with it.
That said, I'd wager it can hardly be called a functional language. Sure, you can't write for loops, but every Elixir process encapsulates a little piece of mutable state. Elixir and its ecosystem allow and encourage you to have (very) many processes, and thus many global singleton-like pockets of mutable state. It's a powerful and pragmatic concept, it works very well, but it doesn't really feel very functional.
The most extreme example of this design philosophy is a Elixir standard library module called "Agent", which is just a cute name for "global mutable variable". When used with care it's a very handy tool but, well, functional? Nah :-)
Clojure! the thing I like most about a lot of the libraries is how they seem to blend so seamlessly. I don't know if it's an artefact of just being a lisp or just a lot of the developers sharing a mindset, but the whole experience feels less janky.
I prefer Clojure as well. I'd say that Elixir probably has the better ecosystem, though, as it seems almost exclusively focused on web development via Phoenix the way Ruby was via Rails. Sure, you could use it for other things, but that is its primary use case. I'm not sure what Clojure's primary use case is.
That said, if I had a choice I'd choose Clojure every time. I just enjoy it so much more. And it has a lot of good web options: you can easily write REST APIs via Ring, build your front-end in re-frame, and use Lacinia for GraphQL endpoints.
To the OP, I'd highly recommend checking out Elixir and Clojure and spending a little time with each before ruling either out.
agree. Once I discovered Clojure, it's all kinds of fun to write in! The community is great. The ecosystem now has plenty of robust libraries to handle most any heavy-lifting task(s).
If you want to play around with getting up and running with a functional clojure backend, I put up this:
Well, IMHO It's F#. F# is really good due to it's better tooling and you have access to the plethora of libraries and framework of the .NET Ecosystem. Unlike Scala or Kotlin, F# retains a lot from it's functional roots like
- Automatic Currying
- ML Type System
Plus it adds some really innovative features like
- Type Providers which allows you to lazily/automatically generate Types for real world data/systems which is pretty cool.
Ultimately it boils down to the Runtime/Tools/Ecosystem which is also true for Scala and Kotlin but it retains a lot from it's OCAML Heritage which makes it lean more towards FP than it contemporaries
PS - I didn't mention clojure as I don't consider dynamic languages a good fit for building large codebase backend systems
We at Crowded (https://crowded.co) have had some very good successes with running F# on .NET Core, both with giraffe and just bare ASP.NET Core. The ecosystem has no shortage of good tooling and libraries, all well maintained by knowledgeable authors.
Application performance and our development productivity is excellent, osx/linux tooling took a while to mature but is only getting better than ever now.
The choice we made when .NET Core was still in development (pre 1.0) for it to become our main stack is definitely paying off!
Elixir/Erlang are one among best functional programming languages for web today. Phoenix is a very performant and productive web framework. You can build a typical web app really fast using Phoenix and Elixir.
I find .NET Core (particularly ASP.NET Core with F# via Giraffe - https://github.com/giraffe-fsharp/Giraffe) extremely good since Microsoft went all open source. I have multiple backends running in a GCloud Kubernetes cluster and develop all my stuff from a non Windows environment. Couldn't be more happy and the speed of ASP.NET Core with Giraffe is fantastic (~100K r/s).
I'd like to add that with F# you get all the benefits of an extremely mature web stack with asp.net core and a huge eco system of very high quality libraries. Frameworks like Giraffe, Suave or Freya make it all possible to write your backend in a functional idiomatic way. Also a big plus for F# is the choice of top notch tooling. You've got Visual studio which works on Windows and Mac, then JetBrains Rider which is awesome and Visual studio code with the Ionide extension. I'd highly recommend anyone to go and check it all out!
F#, first because its ecosystem is the whole .NET Framework world of libraries, utils, etc. Second, because it's got its own set of very functional libraries like suave.io for web apps/services, FSharp.Data for consuming data of diverse sources/natures, Fable.io an elegant JavaScript transpiler. Finally, with very demanding production projects like jet.com it already has proved that it can process massive amounts of transactions.
The only circumstance under which I can imagine someone calling Go "functional" is that, yes, it has first-class functions and closures. But if that's your definition of functional, the term is almost useless because in the modern language landscape, there's pretty much just two or three languages that would not qualify as functional. Sure, they happen to still be the top 3 languages (Java, C, C++), but that would make the entire rest of the landscape functional. Java of course recently grew closures, and C++ has... things... you can do if you really want closures, which would really leave only C as not having closures. Though if you're willing to go so far as to call Go functional, you're not that far from calling C functional because it has function pointers. (In 2018, that may not sound that impressive, but in the 1970s that put it at "at least modestly functional" by the standards of the time.)
Third party resources can be sort of out of date; your first link is from 2014, and therefore has a bunch of inaccuracies. Your second was last updated last Octoboer, so not so much, but is still missing out on stuff.
I second F#. You have access to the full .NET Standard library as well as all of the open source libraries available. I personally found it more of a joy to use than Scala, but that may be due to my knowledge of and experience with .NET.
F# on .NET Core is stable and there are templates for an F# web application.
Been using F# in a web-backend capacity for about two years now. Language is great, hits a very sweet spot when it comes to productivity, tooling (F# has some of the best dev tools out there), etc. Interop with the rest of .NET is pretty much seamless, so there's no lack of good libraries.
I'd say that in terms of ecosystem, anything running on the JVM is probably going to be the broadest; that is, you'll have the most choices (mostly Java libs and frameworks) to decide from. In terms of functional libs/frameworks, that number will drop a lot, but in practice you'll probably have what you need.
If the JVM or Scala/Clojure doesn't sound like a good time, F# is a good option (I'm biased as I work on it). The ecosystem is similar in that most libs/frameworks on NuGet are for C# developers, but in practice you really won't need them for a web service. Giraffe, Suave, and Freya are three choices that will run on .NET Core today.
Eco-system-wise you might want to try compiling from a functional language to JS and target Node.js -- Bucklescript or GHCJS would be my choices. That way you get access to all of the libraries on NPM.
I've been using Clojure on the backend for about 5 years now and find it an absolute joy to work with, having come from a Java background. You get full access to the masses of Java libraries out there as it's on the JVM. Great community support, too.
As an addition, there's also ClojureScript for the front-end. It's come a long way recently, and I've been using it for the last couple of years in production (check out reagent and re-frame if you're interested).
I wouldn't call its ecosystem great, but if you like complex type hackery and don't need to do anything very complicated, Ur/Web can get you quite far.
It's very hard to learn, especially if you're not that familiar with Haskell and SML/OCaml, but once you grok it writing CRUD apps is a breeze. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time looking at the standard library's signature files.
Do note, that some functional languages have good out-of-the-box support for both backend and frontend. An this is not negligible. I'm using F# which in combination with Fable (F#->.js transpiler) lets me really quickly share code, datastructures and serialization with frontend code.
Now, I'm a primarily a backend developer. But sometimes it is just really convenient to be able to hack together an in-house real-time data-analysis or reporting service and render statistics as webpages rather than .csv documents.
If your frontend team is functional as well, then the benefits of sharing the language could be even bigger.
Sure, not everything is perfect in the F# world. However having the possibility to share code with frontend saves me more time than I spend in fighting with the F# ecosystem. And also: programming in F# is just fun joyful. And productive.
Lisp ecosystem is really mature and gives you a lot of freedom.
Dynamic typing, interpeted language, homoiconity, tons of great battle-tested libraries etc., Lisp is truly a great language for backend web development.
Even this very site runs on a homebrew lisp dialect (Arc) running on Dr. Racket (Scheme). If even that bizarre setup (sorry PG :)) can handle this much traffic on a single server, you shouldn't worry about speed or scalibility if you opt for Common Lisp.
Interpreted language? Common Lisp is typically compiled. Besides which, why is interpreted a particular advantage? e.g. Python was interpreted 10 years ago when I was using it, but Common Lisp felt far more flexible and powerful, because you can compile single functions with a key press in SLIME and seamlessly load them into your running (compiled) image... shortest feedback loop I've ever experienced. Maybe Python has caught up in the mean time, I haven't used it seriously for a long time though, so I don't know.
I got excited by both Elixir and Clojure, but vastly prefer Elixir. That said, Clojure would probably be my second choice and one major advantage is that ClojureScript would allow you to also build out the front-end in the same language. As far as I know Elixir's equivalent, ElixirScript, is nowhere near ready enough for that.
[+] [-] joaomdmoura|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|8 years ago|reply
That said, I'd wager it can hardly be called a functional language. Sure, you can't write for loops, but every Elixir process encapsulates a little piece of mutable state. Elixir and its ecosystem allow and encourage you to have (very) many processes, and thus many global singleton-like pockets of mutable state. It's a powerful and pragmatic concept, it works very well, but it doesn't really feel very functional.
The most extreme example of this design philosophy is a Elixir standard library module called "Agent", which is just a cute name for "global mutable variable". When used with care it's a very handy tool but, well, functional? Nah :-)
[+] [-] stanislavb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicwest|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christophilus|8 years ago|reply
That said, if I had a choice I'd choose Clojure every time. I just enjoy it so much more. And it has a lot of good web options: you can easily write REST APIs via Ring, build your front-end in re-frame, and use Lacinia for GraphQL endpoints.
To the OP, I'd highly recommend checking out Elixir and Clojure and spending a little time with each before ruling either out.
[+] [-] tuddman|8 years ago|reply
If you want to play around with getting up and running with a functional clojure backend, I put up this:
https://github.com/tuddman/moarweba
feedback welcome
[+] [-] Odytrice|8 years ago|reply
Plus it adds some really innovative features like - Type Providers which allows you to lazily/automatically generate Types for real world data/systems which is pretty cool.
Ultimately it boils down to the Runtime/Tools/Ecosystem which is also true for Scala and Kotlin but it retains a lot from it's OCAML Heritage which makes it lean more towards FP than it contemporaries
PS - I didn't mention clojure as I don't consider dynamic languages a good fit for building large codebase backend systems
[+] [-] ninofloris|8 years ago|reply
The choice we made when .NET Core was still in development (pre 1.0) for it to become our main stack is definitely paying off!
[+] [-] minhajuddin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickserv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinmoris|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinmoris|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axlprose|8 years ago|reply
https://www.yesodweb.com/book
[+] [-] edgarsanchez|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthonyskipper|8 years ago|reply
There may be other options depending on whether you consider JavaScript or Go to be a functional language.
[+] [-] jerf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kleiba|8 years ago|reply
Do you consider Java a functional language?
[+] [-] xstartup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtech|8 years ago|reply
Spring boot (Java) is also very decent, and Play and akka-http have both first-class Java and Scala API's.
Kotlin has the same JVM advantage.
[+] [-] bringtheaction|8 years ago|reply
http://science.raphael.poss.name/rust-for-functional-program...
Rust has an ecosystem for building web backends.
http://www.arewewebyet.org/
Does Rust have the best ecosystem for a web backend, though? I think that will depend on who you ask and what you are looking for specifically.
[+] [-] steveklabnik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xstartup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlmr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] partisan|8 years ago|reply
F# on .NET Core is stable and there are templates for an F# web application.
[+] [-] kahnpro|8 years ago|reply
Do you need some sort of rest-like HTTP API? Highly suggest Haskell and the Servant framework! It's amazing.
[+] [-] Nelkins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phillipcarter|8 years ago|reply
If the JVM or Scala/Clojure doesn't sound like a good time, F# is a good option (I'm biased as I work on it). The ecosystem is similar in that most libs/frameworks on NuGet are for C# developers, but in practice you really won't need them for a web service. Giraffe, Suave, and Freya are three choices that will run on .NET Core today.
[+] [-] xstartup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agentultra|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustinmoris|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmcgillen|8 years ago|reply
As an addition, there's also ClojureScript for the front-end. It's come a long way recently, and I've been using it for the last couple of years in production (check out reagent and re-frame if you're interested).
[+] [-] steinuil|8 years ago|reply
It's very hard to learn, especially if you're not that familiar with Haskell and SML/OCaml, but once you grok it writing CRUD apps is a breeze. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time looking at the standard library's signature files.
[+] [-] pkese|8 years ago|reply
Now, I'm a primarily a backend developer. But sometimes it is just really convenient to be able to hack together an in-house real-time data-analysis or reporting service and render statistics as webpages rather than .csv documents.
If your frontend team is functional as well, then the benefits of sharing the language could be even bigger.
Sure, not everything is perfect in the F# world. However having the possibility to share code with frontend saves me more time than I spend in fighting with the F# ecosystem. And also: programming in F# is just fun joyful. And productive.
[+] [-] terminalcommand|8 years ago|reply
For example you might be interested in: http://8arrow.org/caveman/
Lisp ecosystem is really mature and gives you a lot of freedom.
Dynamic typing, interpeted language, homoiconity, tons of great battle-tested libraries etc., Lisp is truly a great language for backend web development.
Even this very site runs on a homebrew lisp dialect (Arc) running on Dr. Racket (Scheme). If even that bizarre setup (sorry PG :)) can handle this much traffic on a single server, you shouldn't worry about speed or scalibility if you opt for Common Lisp.
[+] [-] jwhite|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercer|8 years ago|reply